Experiment
by Jakyoku the Wicked
Summary: Szayel finally gets his hand on a test subject. AU, taken from a Bleach RPG. OC's, Gore, Violence, Etc... Not for the weak at gut.


**I know, I know, I have such a sick, twisted mind. This is actually something I refuse to post on an RPG, and, though it will be included in my character's history, it is much too graphic for me to feel comfortable posting on the site. Instead, I have posted it here. I may or may not continue a far more fanfictiony version of this story, using scenes from here as flashbacks. The context? Kaki, a vizard, lost a fight with one of Szayel Aporro Granz's fraccion, Xuan. Xuan returned her to Szayel's laboratory, and, well, Kaki wasn't too happy about it.**

**Here we go:**

Her eyes shut tightly, tangled green strands falling about her face, strewn across the table, the girl in Szayel's lab was twitching with fear. It wasn't fear of this "Szayel" person, it was fear of her attacker. Her attacker was the one who had damaged her and brought her here in the first place. He was the one who wrenched her scarf off of her shoulders and threw it away. Not even the courtesy to give it back.

The door slid open—Kaki would never have imagined that this was an actual door. It just looked like a patch of wall. One of her eyes cracked open and shut tightly, curious to see who the intruder was. But maybe if she kept her eyes closed they would go away.

"Good morning," a voice called with a sickening casualness. Footsteps. Then a pressure on one of her arms; the voice was pulling it up by the forearm. Bruised and bloodied and most of all, burnt. Bandages used to cover that up. Those had been stripped from her body just as quickly as her scarf. As she felt the cool air in the lab striking her face, she realized that her arm was no longer lying in front of her and creating a pocket of warm air between it and the rest of her body. She was exposed. She already felt naked without her scarf. What was next? "Xuan told me all about you, little vizard."

He knew she was awake?

"He told me that you have a little mask. Won't you show me?" the voice asked.

Kaki didn't respond—she was hoping that playing dead would dissuade him. He would get bored and go away, just as all predators do.

The voice chuckled and dropped her arm. Kaki let it fall limp on the table, but she let out a tiny hiss as the raw flesh rubbed against the metal table. "It's useless to resist you know. Why don't you sit up and we'll continue?"

"Make me," Kaki grunted.

With a click of his tongue, the man's gloved hand reached down, snatched her shoulder, and pulled her to a sitting position, her legs folded uncomfortably under her. She gritted her teeth. She hadn't expected him to literally make her.

She was now tempted to fall back down and play dead again. The sight of needles and scalpels and all sorts of other metal instruments she didn't recognize, having never once been to a doctor (tweezers and scissors) reminded her that this was not her mountain. There was probably nowhere to run and there was definitely nowhere to hide.

"Now let's try this again," the man told her. For the first time, Kaki actually looked at the face of this new menace. Glasses hiding amber eyes, pink hair… pink hair… pink hair…

"Ahahahaha! Your hair's pink!" Kaki laughed, rolling back and off of the lab table. She didn't care though—this was just priceless. Pulling herself up so that her chin rested on the lab table, she chortled, "Ne, what happened? Got too much gum stuck in it? Sat under a sakura tree too long? Ne, ne, lady—"

"Urusai!" the man bellowed, snatching her up by the neck. She wished people wouldn't do that. He set her back on the table, dropping her with a light thud. She looked up. The man wasn't twitching with rage. He was smiling. Smirking like he knew something was going to happen and Kaki wouldn't like it. With that same, casual drawl, the man began,"I don't really mind what you think of my hair, vizard-kun, but you will not speak unless spoken to. Now, let's try one more time. Draw your mask."

Kaki felt compelled to disobey. She clenched a fist and shook her head. "No."

The man's smile disappeared. "Today, vizard-kun."

"Stop calling me that," Kaki mumbled.

"You will draw your mask," the man drawled, ignoring her protests, "one way or another." His hand came down on her head, a chuckle came out at her wince. "Though I suppose I could check your condition a little more first."

Kaki blinked wearily. The man moved to the other end of the room, she considered jumping off the table and looking for that door again. The second she moved, however—

"If you're trying to run, vizard-kun, I'd advise against it."

She gritted her teeth and stayed sitting. A few minutes later, the man returned with a syringe and a scalpel, not to mention several of his little jars. He opened them up and set them in a neat little stack on one end of the lab table while Kaki sat, staring nervously at the tip of the needle. When he set it down, she released a sigh of relief. That relief quickly vanished when a firm grip around her arm alerted her to his true intention. He yanked her arm up over her head and ripped her sleeve down, revealing raw and mangled flesh.

"W-what the hell're you doing?" Kaki demanded, attempting to pull her arm back to herself. His grip tightened and she winced.

"I told you; I'm checking your condition," the man laughed. He pulled her arm down against the table, yanking Kaki along after it. Her free arm instantly shot to her other, but he let her other arm go and caught both of her arms in his grasp. "Don't struggle now, I wouldn't want to sever a vein or slice off a finger."

Kaki gritted her teeth and sunk her head into the table. She was not about to watch this. It didn't matter if she did or didn't watch it; it would hurt all the same.

The pink-haired man took the scalpel to her battered left arm and found just about the worst spot he could have found: the mark Xuan's whip had made when it sliced into her hand. The scalpel slowly dragged around the wound; Kaki groaned. Hadn't that hurt enough the first time? Why did he have to reopen that wound? It seemed like hours before he finally took the scab off of the wound and placed it into one of his jars. The next, he simply took a scraping off of the wound and put that in another container. This said and done, he relinquished his grasp on her arms. When she sat up, she was shaking; her hand went straight to her mouth and her mouth covered the open wound.

"Oh, did that hurt?" he mocked. "I'm sorry, I promise this next one won't hurt a bit."

Why didn't she believe that?

"Now give me your arm." Kaki shook her head. "It's your arm or your leg, vizard-kun."

Kaki didn't budge. With a smirk, the man reached for the needle and pushed the vizard's body down against the table. Lifting her left pantleg, he found a spot just below the kneecap which was to his liking and jammed the needle in _hard._ Kaki could not withhold a scream.

"Now, now, don't cry," he laughed, eyes falling to her watering crimson eyes. "It's not so bad, is it now?"

When he pushed down on the syringe and Kaki saw a lumpy red liquid fill the needle, she thought she might vomit. "It's marrow, vizard-kun."

She shut her eyes; warm, salty water trickled down the side of her face. "If it hurts so badly, why don't you draw your little mask?"

She shook her head and shut her eyes. It seemed to take hours before the needle was removed from her leg.

"You know, normally I would have taken the sample from your thigh," the man laughed as he yanked the needle from her wound. As her hand trailed to the puncture mark, his grasped her wrist and pulled it towards her face. "Now, vizard-kun, let's end this foolishness and draw out your mask, shall we?"

Gritting her teeth, Kaki made a decision. It wasn't worth the fight. She let her reiatsu gather and called upon her ivory mask. As soon as it was out, the seven spikes jetting from her mask, she felt an odd crumbling. The man was scraping off chips of her mask with his scalpel. "S-stop that!"

"Make me," the man mocked. She started to struggle and kick, but quickly she found that her attempts at freeing herself even slightly went unappreciated. He dropped her hand and snatched her legs, watching her as she continued to squirm in his grasp. He smiled in amusement. As soon as Kaki realized this, she stops moving, bringing her hand to her face and tearing her mask off.

"I already have the sample, vizard-kun."

"Stop calling me that," she demanded, glaring up at him despite the nervous sweat trickling down the sides of her head.

He smiled. "Then what should I label you?"

Kaki gritted her teeth. "You're a fucking creep."

He frowned, raising a hand to his glasses and pushing on them as though they weren't his mask fragment and would actually move. "How cliché."

She turned her head away.

"I assume you'd rather I call you by your name, then?"

She shut her eyes. Maybe this was all some weird dream and she would wake up, safe and sound beside her sister back in Rydia-san's home. Where they'd been staying. Where she could go find Rydia-san and tell her all about her dream, and she would hold her, and she would tell her it was just a dream and would give her something to snack on—a cookie, maybe—and then she'd go back to sleep. She'd always had trouble getting to sleep, and when she did she'd have nightmares. This must have been one of them.

"Well?"

Pulled from her reverie, Kaki opened her eyes and flickered her gaze towards the man. She scowled and shut her eyes again.

That is, until she felt his hand pressing her head into the cold steel of the table. Her eyes opened and shut again as he continued to press her into the cold steel frame. "I asked you a question; don't be rude."

She opened her mouth, releasing a strangled cry. "Ka-Kaki."

He smiled and left her on the table. If she had wanted to, she could have gotten up and hidden in the amount of time it took for him to return. She didn't. She was scared—terrified of what might happen. When he returned, moments later, followed by another arrancar, she squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn't budged an inch.

"Clean her up," the man drawled lazily.

"Hai, Szayel-sama," the new arrancar said. Kaki recognized the voice though. It was Xuan. As Szayel left and Kaki opened her eyes, she glared at him. He merely grinned down at her. "He left you with your rags on?"

Kaki winced.

"Well, this is the last time," Xuan laughed, reaching for the collar of her shirt. Her eyes shot open wide as she edged away just before he could grab it. It only irritated him; his hand quickly shot to her neck instead. "Get over it, vizard."

His free hand moved to the collar of her shirt and he quickly pulled it down, ripping through the coarse fabric with ease. He yanked the article off of her, leaving her exposed. As his hand went down to her pants, she started to sob. "Tch, little brat. It's not as if anyone else will see. You're going to die here eventually."

Nevertheless, Kaki continued to shake her head and sob, tears rolling down her cheeks. He sighed. Szayel would take that from her later. Instead, he rolled up her pant legs and sliced off the bandages with a scalpel, nicking her legs in the process. He didn't care—nor did he feign caring.

He snatched up her wrist and dragged her off the table, ignoring her difficulty walking. She limped along after, feeling as though he would rip off her arm.

She was shoved roughly into a stall and shut in. Just as Kaki began to think he would leave her alone, water rained down on her. It was liquid pellets of ice, like tiny bullets assaulting her skin. As it rained down upon her she found there was no place in that tiny cell that she could avoid the freezing shower. She covered her eyes with her hands as the water drenched her tiny, shivering frame. The pellets of frozen water continued to pour down on her indefinitely, or so it seemed. When the water stopped running a few moments later, she stood there, shivering. The door opened.

"Get out," Xuan ordered, snatching the shivering child's shoulder. Like before, he led her through the hallway, back to where Szayel stood over the lab table, peering thoughtfully into the translucent contents of a syringe.

Kaki's bone marrow.

"It's funny, vizard-kun," the scientist murmured, "It looks like it has little fragments of hollow mask within."

Kaki bit her tongue as Xuan led her closer to the table. He directed her to get onto the table with a flick of his wrist, and she didn't. She wasn't going up there again. She looked at the floor and turned away.

Moments later, a hand snatched her by the shoulder and slammed her down on the table. Rendered immobile, she tried to struggle to no avail.

"Let us commence," the man drawled, "act one."

* * *

"Let me g-AAAAAAAGH!" Kaki screeched as her flesh was sliced open. The bite of a sword had always hurt. She'd never imagine that a blade so tiny and so delicate could hurt so much more. A scalpel crept across her abdomen. She would have kicked and screamed and rendered the scientist's actions impossible—had she not been buckled down as far as her little limbs would stretch.

She bit her lower lip in some attempt to withhold her strangled cries. No dice. She whimpered as the deliberate drag of the scalpel slit apart her skin with a sickening perfection. Blood leaked out; the tiny scalpel could not induce the spray of blood that a normal sword would have. She waited impatiently for the scientist to finish creating the first incision.

No, no, he was taking his sweet time. Nevermind that there was a bleeding child on his table, he was savoring the moment.

His voice full of treacle, the man purred, "Relax."

Yeah. That was gonna happen.

His gloved hands slowly pulled the strips of flesh off of her abdomen, revealing a rainbow of muscles and tissue. Her organs beat frantically, her diaphragm stiffened as she held her breath. He slit apart the muscles on her abdomen, so smoothly. As the scalpel bit into her muscle and tore it in two, she shut her eyes and whimpered. The accompanying gush of blood was a reminder. It hurt; it hurt; it hurt. And she was helpless.

She screamed.

He offered no words as he tore her apart, gloved hands reaching into her stomach as though it were a treasure chest. He smiled—he was relaxed, this much Kaki could see. He knew something.

She was trapped.

His hand wrapped around her stomach, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.

"For now, vizard-kun," he murmured, readying his scalpel. Her eyes went wide. "I'll be taking this."

She screamed.

* * *

He picked at every part of her, leaving nothing unexposed. Halfway through the ordeal she had simply stopped screaming—her throat was raw enough as it was. As she trembled, he had left his fraccion to sew her back up, and he was taking his sweet time with it.

"I honestly thought you might have a little more fight in you," the silver-haired subordinate spoke, his voice a low murmur. "It seems I was wrong."

Kaki gritted her teeth as the needle pierced her flesh again. And again. And again.

"Then again, you are a female," he laughed half-heartedly as he stitched her up. "It's to be expected of someone with such…"

He trailed off.

Why did he trail off? What was he going to say that he had to trail off? Kaki hissed as he finished stitching her up and stood.

Did she want to know?

He was gone before she decided.

* * *

She shivered. The tiny vizard stood on her own two legs for the first time in days. Two weak, trembling legs. The scientist referred to this test as his control. Before he put her in this tiny little room, he hooked her up to an IV and 'fed' her. She was not allowed to eat of her own accord. Perhaps she was growing frustrated.

But she was no more frustrated than she was scared.

Strange little cups and wires stuck to her body, and, in some attempt to keep her from messing with them, her hands were chained to the wall in front of her, and her ankles were chained to the wall behind her. She could not sit if she wanted to; her hands were held too high, and her feet were too low.

She shivered.

The room was, in fact, a freezer. Not specifically, but Kaki wished it was. She would not be leaving any time soon.

"After this experiment, Vizard-kun, we'll try again with your mask," the scientist explained, amber eyes glinting with amusement. It was all a game to him, wasn't it? Just a test to see how long she would last with and without her mask. Kaki suspected this was only the first of many, and was afraid to see what would happen.

Two days passed in that freezer. If nothing else, Kaki's reiatsu was keeping her alive. She tried to lean against the wall of the freezer but could not. Her heart beat slowed. Her eyes drooped.

She was dying.

And she would welcome death.

"See, vizard-kun?" drawled the scientist, peering at the girl through a window on the other side of the chamber. "You've been in here for fifty hours and four minutes. How do you feel?"

Kaki gave no answer. She did not look at the man.

"Typical," he murmured, opening the door. Mist rolled out of the steely room, floating from the air and sinking to the ground. Warm air flooded the chamber as quickly as cold air flooded the lab, but the battle for dominance was short. The warmth smothered the cold, and the frozen little vizard thought she might cry.

She had been so close to death's cold, unfeeling grasp.

"Xuan, untie her," he ordered, turning his gaze to the silver-haired _snake_.

It was his fault, wasn't it? That she was here in the first place. He had defeated her. And she was the reason she had been removed from her element. From her home. From Rydia; from Hotaru.

"B…bastard," she choked, not realizing that the man had already finished removing her from the chamber. He smiled at her, revealing two sharp fangs. He slammed her down on the lab table.

"Do be gentle," the scientist ordered, "I wouldn't want her to suffer too much damage before we can prepare her for the second part of this examination."

Kaki groaned.

"Next," continued the bespectacled arrancar, "with her mask."

"How long do you want her on the IV for?"

"Same as last time; give her two hours to sleep after that. And do make sure Adan hasn't mucked up the records."

Kaki could not focus on the voices, nor decipher their words. It was all a blur from that point on, and she only wished for sleep. Sleep, or death, either would do perfectly. Either would make her smile; either would bring her joy. Relief. Either was better than this.

The needles. The cords. The wires.

The laughter.

She hated them all.

But she hated herself more. She was the one who had lost so badly. She was the one who allowed this to occur.

Because she was weak.

* * *

"Exhausted already?"

Thirty hours. Thirty hours in that blasted freezer with her mask drawn. Because she was not used to her mask. Because she had resisted when told to draw her mask. Because she had told them, "I will never use my mask again."

Because she was too stubborn.

They hurt her. Szayel was furious; he had her legs broken—not by him, of course, why would he do such a disgusting, brutish thing when he had fraccion to do so? And then he broke her fingers—she wouldn't need them anyways.

So broken and weary, she finally agreed to draw her mask.

And she was shoved into the freezer.

She hadn't lasted as long, and that seemed to irritate the scientist.

"What an insignificant little worm," he boomed, turning her head from side to side. She no longer resisted, too tired to do so, even when he threw her to the ground and stormed out of the laboratory, towards his computer. "Xuan, teach the little roach not to will herself dead during an experiment."

Kaki admitted, she had given up and waited for death to come and take her, but it never came. She was removed from the freezer too quickly.

Now that she thought about it, she was almost glad. Death seemed like a friend, coming to bring her home. But what about Rydia? And Hotaru? Surely they were trying to find her. Surely they were searching!

But somehow she knew they would never find her.

She would have to find them, and that was impossible.

* * *

After the freezer, Kaki repeated the experiment with an oven. Not a real oven, mind you, but the temperature remained at a steady, arid, 110 degrees.

Not pleasant.

* * *

"Oh? Why's that?"

Kaki didn't know what the pink-haired man was talking about. She didn't realize she had spoken at all. "N-nani?"

"You asked me to leave," the scientist explained coolly. "Now I'll ask once more. Why's that?"

Kaki shut her eyes and bit her lower lip. She had not just asked him to leave. She was terrified of what he would do to her for this, and, in all honesty, she hoped he would grow tired of her and simply slit her throat. Pierce her skull. Something, at the very least.

"I expect an answer."

Kaki whimpered quietly, choosing her words as carefully as she could. "I-I think I-I'm g-g-gonna puke."

"Ah, I see," the man murmured with a slight grin. "I suppose that's fair enough, seeing as you just swallowed something with your own mouth for the first time in about a week."

"I-it's been a week?"

There was a brief silence, the man smiling down at her. She understood. "I-I wanna be alone…"

"Soon, vizard-kun. I have that little quincy's corpse to work on, after all."

Kaki shut her eyes and waited for the drugs to kick in.

* * *

The drugs were bad, the vivisections were worse, and everything else was horrible. But of everything the man did to her, Kaki hated that little cell most of all. It wasn't even a cell, really, just a little cage in a corner. If she was lucky, she would receive a mouthful of water between experiments. But usually, that cell was dark, secluded, and silent.

Sometimes the man's fraccion would come to insult her, to mock her. They were only having their fun, but Kaki only wished they would end her life. She asked them once, and was only laughed at.

She only saw two of the man's fraccion, but she suspected there was another. The one she originally suspected to be the one called "Achaparrado" was actually named "Stour." The other one was Xuan.

She hated them both.

"Onee-chan!"

"She won't stop babbling."

"Should we wake her up, Szayel-sama?"

"No, let her sleep. Too many experiments and too little sleep will only shorten her lifespan, and I'd rather drag out her pathetic existence before she dies. After all, a corpse is far less useful than a live specimen."

"Hai."

"I still say we teach her some manners."

"That's gotta be boring."

"Oh, be quiet."

"Yeah, but look at her. All she ever does is wait for Szayel-sama to either get bored of her or experiment on her. In between she just… cries."

"Good; maybe those tears of hers will be useful for an experiment, right, Szayel-sama?"

"Doubtful, but we'll see."

"Can I watch her during your meeting tomorrow, Szayel-sama?"

"Why?"

"Cause I wanna try my stump scare on her. I've been practicing, see?"

"Will you STOP aiming that thing at people?"

"I told you, I'd kill you if you did that again!"

"Idiot."

"Urusai!"

"Um, Szayel-sama?"

"I'd rather she remains alive, so I will leave her in your hands. Pray you don't kill her, or far worse will be done to you."

"Yosh!"

* * *

"You're really boring, you know?"

Kaki blinked. She hoped this third fraccion wouldn't hurt her like the others did. She was afraid of him as it was. She hoped he wouldn't hurt her. Even if he did, she hoped he wasn't as bad as the others.

"Usually people jump when I show them this hand, er, well, what's left of it. It freaks them out, y'know?"

"What happened to your hand?" she whispered.

This beaming little fraccion cocked his head and waved his stump in the air. His arm which once had a hand, but now, only a flesh-coated end remained, stretched like plastic over his forearm. It looked unreal.

Especially to Kaki.

"See, when I was just a hollow, it got blasted clean off. I turned into a menos immediately after, see, and when I evolved I was still missing a hand. So there's this guy, Aizen-sama, and he's offering people power. So I think to myself, 'hey, if I go, maybe he can help me get my hand back.' Well, I didn't get my hand back, but this does have its worth."

Kaki smiled softly.

"I'm not gonna hurt ya."

She looked up at him, shocked. "R-really?"

"Eh, I never thought hurting people was fun. Scaring them can be, but hurting them is boring."

Kaki let out a relieved sigh. He wouldn't hurt her.

Good.

"Hey, wanna play a word game?"

Kaki shook her head. "No."

"Whaddoya wanna do?"

"I…"

The fraccion frowned. He looked at her, eyes full of a deep understanding as he murmured, "You wanna die, don't you?"

Kaki's eyes widened. "Are you going to kill me?"

"No."

Kaki frowned.

"I have a better idea."

His hand shot out at her, and the next thing she knew, all went _black_.

* * *

"Who are you? What are you doing with my sister?"

"She'll be safer with you."

Kaki opened her eyes quietly. She was no longer stark naked in the laboratory in Los Noches. In her cell, there was never a sky, and it never rained. Come to think of it, she felt awfully dry. The man above her, the blue-eyed boy with his messy black hair, he was frowning.

Like he'd done something wrong.

And there, oh, right there, was the brilliant sight. Her sister. Scarlet eyes, black hair, and an unrivaled fury. "Of course she will be! Now give her to me!"

Kaki was too disorientated to notice that Adan did not hand her to her sister, but to an older, green-haired vizard instead.

"Rydia-san…"

"Arigato," the woman murmured, holding the child to her chest. "Hotaru, sheathe your sword. He is a friend."

"I shouldn't stay here though; I mean, I took out her bugs, and Szayel-sama… Szayel's going to kill me."

And in a flash, he left, leaving Kaki with her family and the patter of rain.

"Onee-chan?"

"Hai, Nee-san?"

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"Rydia-san?"

"I know."

And she, for the first time in three weeks, relaxed into her teacher's arms.


End file.
